


Losses Left to be Had.

by RikaNeedsCoffee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Angst, Child Neglect, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Hurt, Language of Flowers, Sad Ending, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24352051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RikaNeedsCoffee/pseuds/RikaNeedsCoffee
Summary: In which Gakushuu gets contacts, and paints flowers, and finds that there's always more to be lost even at rock bottom.
Relationships: Asano Gakuhou & Asano Gakushuu
Comments: 11
Kudos: 104





	Losses Left to be Had.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! Just three things before we start!
> 
> 1.) f you've read any of my previous works, I just wanna forewarn you: this isn't going to be like them. This is gonna be a lot of sadness, and if you're not good with that, then you probably shouldn't read this. 
> 
> 2.) I'll explain more about this in the end notes, but this is sort of a canon divergence, so better watch out for that if things get kind of confusing haha
> 
> 3.) ALL of the flowers mentioned mean something, so if you want to, go ahead and look them up using Hanakotoba :))
> 
> Okay!! With that out of the way, I hope you like it!!

There's a multitude of things that Gakushuu's never told anyone about, and they're all mundane enough that it shouldn't really matter whether it's brought up in a conversation or not; little things, like he used to collect buttons, or that he preferred orange juice over milk. 

Back then, he'd even worn glasses. They made him look small and nerdy, and that was entirely appropriate, because, for the most part, he fit those attributes. He'd been shy and nervous at some point, and clung the the cloth of his dad's pants, bu it was okay how small he felt, because he was a child, and children were small anyhow. Besides, who would pick on him? He was his father's son, and that practically made him untouchable.

At some point, he can remember finding the glasses to be too much of a hassle, always getting lost or bent because he'd get careless from time to time, so his mother had taken him to an ophthalmologist. He gets himself a fresh new pair of contacts that day, and isn't it so funny, the coincidences life offers you?

Gakushuu Asano trades his glasses for a pair of contacts on a warm Tuesday, just as summer was about to arrive, and it's this same day that a boy named Rikuto Ikeda dies.

-0-

He loves to paint.

Realistically speaking, he realizes how little could be done with it. He knows deep down that there isn't really a place for him to flourish in that sort of industry, but... it was all nice, wasn't it? The colors bled together so well on paper, and it was fascinating to see what sort of contrast they'd make, blue skies and green grass against each other; who _wouldn't_ love to paint?

He especially had a fondness for painting his mother's flower garden. It was bright, and wonderful, and sometimes, right after it rained, a large rainbow would show up. His mom would tell him that he didn't have to wait for a rainbow to actually show up, that he could paint one anytime, but he'd furrow his brow and proclaim obstinately that, "It has to be _realistic_ , mom."

Of course, the choppy little petals and extremely thick stems on the flowers he attempted to recreate were far off the mark from being believable yet, but they were beautiful nonetheless, and he figures that it wouldn't be long before he got the hang of it.

He's painting a little patch of red spider lilies that his mother had recently begun cultivating when he hears his father's footfalls nearing and smiles easily, dropping his canvas and brush onto the ground in a clutter.

"Dad!" He says, running toward's their front door. "Welcome home."

He looks up at the older Asano, eyes bright, because he always looks forward to when his dad would arrive. Gakuhou cups his cheek, looking down to meet his gaze, and he's used to this, getting small bits of affection like a pat on the head or a brush to the shoulder from his father-- a stark comparison to his mother, who hugs too tightly and leaves bright red lipstick marks on his face every so often-- but something's off.

The hand on his cheek swipes down and leaves his face as fast as it was there. Theres residue of red paint on his hand; _ah,_ so he was just cleaning it off...?

"Painting again?" Gakuhou _tsks_. "Isn't it about time you got rid of that little hobby? You're a smart boy; you should see as well as I do that it won't be getting you anywhere."

It hits like a blow to hear those words, and despite how suddenly his father had just set him off balance, Gakushuu remains upright. His dad had walked away so quickly, too, leaving him standing against their doorway stunned beyond speech, and he's just as small as he'd been before he decided to abandon the glasses that had made him look like a nerdy little wire, but he decides to make himself smaller anyways.

He can't even think to run to his room, simply indulging in his own unforseen apprehension and dropping down to curl into a ball. He remains that way until his mother finds him there, breathless and far too overwhelmed, and it's when she cups a hand to his cheek the same way his father had and pulled him forward into an embrace does he think to cry.

-0- 

At the end of the day, he fundamentally understood. 

Art was always just a hobby, nothing more. It would never get in the way of his academics, his plans for where his life would go. It might have stung, but that was no matter, was it? Not in the face of what his father expected of him.

He adored his father, reveled in the way he got carried on his shoulders every time he won a medal for something or another, and he wasn't about to let a mere hobby stand in the way of that pride.

As a manifestation of this, he decides that he's going to become valedictorian this year. He's in 5th grade now, 10 and a half years old, and he operates on a four month long plan to achieve his goal. He's always been one of the brighter students, only having been beaten by those fortunate enough to be smart and religiously studious at such young ages, but that would change now.

His father had told him, so far back that he can only foggily remember it, that he's going to be proud of anything he achieves. Gakushuu has recently developed a thirst to over-achieve, though, so he might as well make it a gold medal, right?

Those 4 months before the summer preceeding 6th grade, the school holds an annual science fair. For this, he makes a whole replica of his mother's garden, with little tabs on the side that demonstrate the process of photosynthesis. It had taken him more than an hour of each day for 3 whole weeks to complete, and he wins second place. When he gets home, cheap silver trophy in hand, he heads straight for his father's office to show him.

"You've been working on that for weeks," is all his father says, and he feels that same weariness he'd felt a while ago, but decides to stamp it down.

"Yeah!" He smiles, because he worked hard for it. Usually, he'd put minimal effort on the fair and still get a certificate at least, but to have actually placed was something he could be proud of.

Then, his father speaks, and it makes Gakushuu's blood run cold. 

"And you managed only second? How pitiful." His little plastic trophy, silver and shiny, gets harshly ripped away from his fingers and pitted carelessly into the trash can.

"I hope you realize this by now," his father says, eyeing him with what looked horribly close to disgust. "I've been quite lax in telling you this, because I figured you'd have the comprehension to understand as much, but since you clearly do not."

His father sets a hand on his shoulder, and Gakushuu will never admit to how it makes him flinch. "Gold. Champion. First place. Those things are all the standard you must set for yourself if you ever wish to succeed. Anything below it is to be punished, and anything above it is expected."

In retrospect, maybe he should've realized it by then. Maybe he should've given up, figured out that from that moment, any effort coming from his part would only set him up to be disappointed in the end... but then, he got tired of being small that day, didn't he? That might've been the first time he felt it. The rush, the urge to rise and above all else, trample everyone below him.

If becoming a god among men was what it took for his father's pride, then it was all too achievable wasn't it?

-0-

"You hardly ever use them anymore," his mom urges, and, confused, he turns to her.

"Hm?"

They're looking through his closet for clothes he can donate. They do it every so often, whenever Gakushuu gets taller or bigger. When he stares at her hands, he sees his mom holding out an old blue box that sets his heart aching with unfettered nostalgia.

"You used to use them everyday," his mom says casually, but he knows better than to believe that sort of nonchalance. There's something underlying the way she says it, like a question she might be too afraid to ask.

"Yeah," he replies, "but it's not like it was ever going to get me anywhere."

"You had fun, though, didn't you?" 

He scratches the back of his head at that, the silence following those words so awful and too prolonged, but then his mom says, "If you're not going to be using them, then I suppose there must be some kids out there who'd like them."

" _No_!"

They're both surprised by his outburst. It was unlike him to do something like that, or else, it had recently become unlike him. He's become reserved, lately, never outspoken enough even when a situation would warrant it, and both he and his mother know why, but they both have too much social grace never to discuss it, always skirting around the topic.

"I just mean..." He says, after a short while of his mother waiting for him to explain. "I can still use it. For creative outputs, and whatnot."

His mother looks at him gently, quirks her lips a bit, and eventually decides to inform him, "You make no sense to me sometimes." Because he _wasn't_ making sense.

He had an identical green box on his desk, where he did all his schoolwork; it was full of things like craft paper and glue, and decorative markers, all things more suitable to schoolworks and all things that were by far more used, as they were in an accessible place and not rotting away and gathering dust at the back of his closet like his blue one was.

He doesn't deign to return his mothers stare, and she sighs.

"Alright then." She shoves it back into the closet. Then, she brushes hair out of his eyes, and in a small act of consideration, seems to look at him with the sort of apologetic gaze only a son would forgive a mother for. 

They've never talked about it before, and with bated breath he realizes he may never be prepared to talk about it, so he before she can say anything, he offers unsubtly, "I know, I know. I need a haircut"

His mother presses her lips together and blinks, instantly rendering all the emotion on her face null, and it's trick he was beginning to develop for himself. "We can schedule an appointment next week."

-0-

Amasaki Mika is a bright eyed, small girl that he's classed with, cute and charming in her own shy-natured way.

She wears bows in her hair and has a purple bracelet on her right wrist, a detail he notices as she bows lowly and thrusts her hands forward to him, and he notices that she's clutching a small pink envelope secured only with a red heart sticker.

He knows how these things go, has seen them happen both in movies and a few times in real life, but that's not to say he's experienced with them. Of course, it isn't like him to be unprepared.

Before she can open her mouth, he says softly, "I appreciate the gesture, but I don't think I can accept your confession."

She turns up to look at him, a wet smile on her face as she chokes back a sob and tells him, "Tha-that's o-okay!"

She runs off afterwards, a bit aimlessly, but then she's surrounded by a pair of girls she's usually with, and he has to think to himself that he just made a girl cry.

This doesn't make him all too popular with his classmates when he gets back the next day, but, then again, he'd never really been so popular. A small part of him is cruel, though, and it reminds him, _you had friends, didn't you? Where are they now?_

It's one of the few questions he doesn't know the answer to, but like all things he can't quite figure out, he simply finds a way to turn the problem on its head.

-0-

He's valedictorian.

Of course he is, he said he would be right? If nothing else, Gakushuu kept his promises.

He's sitting at the backseat of the car, his father driving and his mother asleep, with a small pile of certificates and medals beside him, and he thinks back to a few years ago when he'd gotten a bronze medal on some soccer game or another. They'd driven to a restaurant he'd used to love as a small kid, and his parents let him eat as much ice cream as he wanted.

Today, he won a gold medallion, one that meant to spell out that he, above every silly little boy or girl who won some nonsense accolade of participation, _he_ achieved the right to lorde above them all.

His mother had been ecstatic of course, taking pictures and thanking his teachers for all the compliments they showered him, but his father had simply smiled at every photo taken and, when they had been ready to leave, looked at him in the face and said, "I expect this sort of performance consistently."

He supposes, looking back, it should've felt like a sucker punch to the gut, leaving his stomach feeling twisted and knocking the air out of his lungs, but, horrifyingly, he's starting to think that there's nothing more left inside him to feel disappointed or upset.

He should be boiling over, red with anger, maybe, but there's hardly anything left to burn now, so it all fails to matter to him anymore.

-0-

During summer, Gakushuu decides to take on soccer again. He has practices every Monday and Thursday, and after one such meeting, he walks back home, sweaty and tired, but with a vague sense of contentment.

Just after walking in through the front door, he sets his shoes on the shoerack, and says to no one in particular, "I'm home," noting with a frown that his mothers freesias are wilting.

When he enters the kitchen, all he wants is a cold glass of orange juice, but instead his eyes meet the door of the refridgerator, and instead of it being hardly visible, covered to the brim with those dumb little paintings he'd used to spend so much time on, he walks over to it to find it barren and dull. 

Every single one of his paintings were gone, and, somehow, this is where he feels the punch he'd been missing, a knife to the thoat he'd never before felt so sharply.

He forgoes the orange juice and runs up to his room, and he refuses to acknowledge that he's trembling when he covers himself over with his blankets.

When his mom comes up later on to tell him that it's time for dinner, he says nothing. Even further that night, when she enters his room to see if he's fine, he stays silent, and remains so even as she sits down on his bed and gently pries the blanket off of him.

Sometimes he forgets that he's only eleven, and that he's allowed the small luxury of bleeding when something pierces through him.

His mother doesn't speak, either, apparently content in watching him writhe, wide-eyed and curled up the same way he had been that day that he'd had his glasses replaced, and oh, really, how funny it is, he thinks bitterly, because maybe that had been it. Maybe his world had begun discoloring once he removed his glasses, because that's when all of this began right?

"Mom, where did he go?" He finally says, and he knows he didn't get through that sentence without his voice cracking in a few places too many, but his mother understands him all the same even despite the horribly vague question.

She bites her lip, before sighing and drawing him close, closer until his forehead is set against the curve between her neck and her shoulder. That's good, he thinks, because then he can't feel himself shaking so much anymore

His mother tells him, then, about Ikeda Rikuto, a boy he'd only heard of a handful of times, but somehow a boy he now feels like he can't compare to. "He jumped off a river," his mother had told him during her story, and he is struck intensely by how appealing that thought can sound to his ears.

When his mother leaves, he knows it all, is suddenly equipped with the information he's long since desired so immensely, and yet somehow his head feels hollow. Barren, like the rest of him, and the door of the refridgerator in their kitchen, and his stomach when he decides to skip dinner entirely.

He stays in his bed, clutching his blanket over his head and somehow still shaking as he wonders if Ikeda had also seen the world this discoloured, because he thinks that if he looks up at the sky or down at the grass, they'd all look awfully dull.

-0-

After that summer, sixth grade arrives, and really there's only one notable thing about it. Well, to be more exact, there are two seperate epiphanies for him, but really just the one event.

They're meant to paint flowers for art class, and isn't that just all sorts of sadistically hilarious?

He thinks to himself when he gets home after school that day, _why not_ , brings out art supplies from the back of his closet, and goes out to his mother's garden. He paints her sweet peas this time, and it's all too familiar even if the paint set's been untouched for practically an entire year. His mother catches him, but she stays silent as she is wont to do, and he continues painting.

He realizes now, that this is something he should've long since tired of, because, objectively speaking, there's no beauty to be found here. He wonders what he saw in this place anyhow, with all its colors clashing against each other, competing for attention thats only ever been given to it by one person.

 _It had been two people, before_ , a small part of himself that he'd long since though he'd snuffed out says, _you used to love this garden, didn't you?_

There are plenty of things he used to love, he thinks, but somehow he cannot shake the feeling that it was all pointless to have done so. This garden had been colorful, and maybe, before, he'd been able to pick out each color and see in them what he liked, the small, wirey, glasses-wearing kid he was, but now...

Now, as his mother sets a glass of water next to him, he looks up at her, and then at the garden, and he thinks that, no, there's nothing to be loved in a garden where all colors bled together horribly and turned themselves into a nasty shade of rotten grey

  
The second thing he realizes in sixth grade, when he passes that paper to his teacher and she beams at him for his lovely work, is that he'll be going to Kunugigaoka next year.

Father's school.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that no son of his father would be content with just a mere valedictorian's spot, would they?

No, he needed it _all_. Captain of the soccer team, top of the class, student council president. He would have it all, and this train of thought sticks with him up until he gets home, as he tosses the final remains of his old blue box into the trash next to some rotting anemones his mother had probably thrown out.

His paintbrushes' handles' loud colors clash horribly with the white of the anemone, but they're all garbage, so it all hardly matters anymore.

-0-

It is to nobody's surprise that Gakushuu takes Kunugigaoka by storm.

He hears the whispers, all of them, ranging from his teacher's pleasant little remarks of what a brilliant young mind he was, to those of his fellow male students apparently envying him for his newfound popularity.

That _was_ new, wasn't it? The popularity of his that somehow got large enough to nestle him with a boy named Sakakibara Ren. He was awfully chatty, always chittering about the latest thing he found interesting, and far too confident for Gakushuu's taste, but he's top student in Japanese, and overall second in the class, naturally beaten by only Gakushuu himself.

They become... something. A study pair, the batch's most appealing duo(according to the female half of the student body), or whatever else it is that the public had managed to come up with.

Gakushuu prefers to see their relationship as one consisting of a master and his pet, or a future leader and his assistant/minion, but Ren is free to delude himself call them friends if it would please him. 

They're never going to be on equal footing, though; Gakushuu knows they aren't, not when Ren is too vulnerable and at the reach of everyone else, and especially not when you compare that to the untouchable pedestal that Gakushuu's built up for himself, but he figures Ren doesn't need to know that.

In Kunugigaoka, he also bears witness to End Class, the small, pitiable little pile of rubble that his father-- the _principal_ has clumped together to be the public's personal object of ridicule.

They're a sad sight to see, but they're hardly his priority now. He's got to take over this school first, of course, before he can even begin to think of those poor souls who've had the misfortune of landing where they did.

He's an Asano; it's only natural.

-0-

When he's elected as Student Council President on only his second of three years in junior high, nobody is surprised, least of all him.

He's worked for this of course, but it hardly phases him, not after consistently becoming valedictorian, or making it to the soccer team without even having to try out at the second round of eliminations.

Still, Gakushuu accepts the position gratefully, with a graceful charm in his smile that can outdo even Ren, and it's all fake, but everybody believes him so it's not like it matters, does it?

So little does, nowadays, he thinks after stepping down and moving on. After the ceremony announcing the new council positions, he heads back to his class. He's not classmates with Ren anymore, but he's rounded up some guy from the broadcasting club named Araki, and another named Koyama, who has a particular knack for memorization.

They're all collections, he thinks-- _knows_ , even. They'd all look good in a room together, brilliant and inspiring, but that could wait for when he's reelected next year and he's given the trust to choose his own members.

For now, his mind wanders strangely, going from the idealized version of his own personal little puppet government, to, for a reason he can't begin to explain, E Class. What would it be like, he wonders, to be on that end of the stick, when Gakushuu has only ever known his own end at the top, standing almightily and yet in constant fear of being toppled over because of how hollow he feels on the inside.

"Ikeda hadn't exactly been the brightest, but that's what your father was for," his mother had told him that night, when he'd been shaking ruthlessly underneath his covers, and he thinks to himself, surely Ikeda would've been the type to have landed himself in class E, where he sees only the people who are miserable and stupid and lazy, those who were surely always meant to be given a fate that made them crave an early death.

_But, why is it that here, on the opposite end, I still--_

The bell rings so loudly in his ears that it completely rinses out his thoughts. He stands abruptly, noticing the teacher walking through the classroom door, and leads the rest of the class in their greeting.

-0-

He's at the school swimming pool when it happens.

The moon explodes, just on the first week of his third year and he's unphased somehow, but then again, he hadn't been one of the students actually _in_ the pool when the explosion happened.

He'd instead been on a bench, permitted to sit by his gym teacher after he'd managed to beat the longstanding record for fastest 1000 meter lap. He hadn't liked being in the water anyways, and maybe that was what really goaded him into swimming so fast; he doesn't like the way limbs make the water splash around, like the waves of an ocean under a bridge that anyone can simply jump off of--

Or, well, who was he kidding? Maybe he just wanted to show off. It had stopped being about pride; it hadn't been about pride for a long time now, had it? Not his father's, or his own. Everything was simply about reputation now.

He'd be happy to let it all crash and burn, if he's being completely honest, because maybe the surrounding fire will make him see red and orange, and something other than this mind-numbing grey always pervsding his mind.

"-ano! Asano c'mon!" Ren is his classmate again this year, and the brunette is grabbing at his arm.

He snaps out of whatever little trance he'd been in, blinking his eyes, and suddenly he's no longer the distracted, dazed Asano Gakushuu, switching quickly to his President Mode in the blink of an eye.

(He really had learned that trick of his mother's in the end. He could even outdo it, he thinks.)

He rallies everybody in a line and makes sure that every single class in his year has been headcounted before proceeding with the rest of the junior high students.

When he's finished, everyone's sent home, and it's all sorts of uncomfortable to have to trudge through the school in wet clothes before getting changed, but eventually he's back at his house with his mother smothering him, worriedly checking his face, arms, and the rest of his body for any signs of injury, before asking, "What about your father?"

"What _about_ him?" He asks back, thinking that the commotion at Kunugigaoka probably just got the principal too busy to call home, and when his mother fixes him a stare, he says, "I didnt ask... I don't really care."

She flinches, then, and maybe thats what gets him to realize the honesty with which those words were spoken.

He has so goddamn little left in him.

None of it feels like affection, let alone love, and he thinks, terrified, that if his father ended up exploding along with the moon, he would've hardly batted an eye. He cares about as Gakuhou Asano just as much as a regular student would for their school principal, a minimal sense of concern for the safety of a fellow human being, but not much more than that.

"You don't mean that," his mother asserts, staring at him wide-eyed and frantic, with a sort of subdued terror that Gakushuu's far too sharp to not notice.

He shrugs his shoulders despite it and apologizes formally. Then he informs her, "I'm going to my room now."

He doesn't know what his mother does after he passes her by. Maybe she's still standing there. Maybe she's left to do something to amuse herself. 

_Oh_ , he thinks mildly as he sets down his schoolbag, she was probably trying to contact the school for the principal.

Maybe he really didn't mean it, Gakushuu thinks as he lifts the covers over himself reminiscent of the time a few years ago when he'd shed the last of his tears. Maybe he didn't mean it, but he wasn't _lying_.

It probably wouldn't be entirely accurate to say he didn't care at all, but he can't go forth and be honest by saying that it would bother him too badly if something terrible were to happen. Conclusively, all he knows is that he feels twice as empty as he had the last time he was buried under his blankets the way he was now.

-0-

E Class is thriving, and it terrifies him how grateful he is for it, because now he can feel fear or a vague sense of loathing whenever he sees them, rather than the barren wake that so usually occupies his mind.

They beat D Class at baseball, and even managed to win a bet against him and his fresh new set of minions known as the Student Council.

The principal is horrified, of course, and there's the slightest hint of enjoyment Gakushuu sees in that before he backs away a little and realize that in the grand scheme of things, it should hardly matter.

 _Should_.

Because a half hour ago he'd been struck down off of a pole by the force of one Itona Horibe, with the rest of E-class backing him up, and now he's fighting off the urge to vomit as he sits in the bathroom alone.

He'd threatened E Class, just before he'd been walked back to the main building by his group of Virtuosos(he finds the term quite pretentious, but thinks it apt enough not to speak up). That had all been show, because right now as he sits atop the toilet seat, he's livid with absolute _fear_.

The thing is, he's long since gotten over all the shit his father had given him. Gakushuu's been disappointed by him too much, and upset even more times than that, by now being long past the stage point where his resentment would calcify.

 _But awhile ago_ , he thinks, covering his mouth. _That_.

Gakushuu has never been afraid of his father, and even if he's long since shifted from 'Dear Old Dad' to 'Distant Mister Principal', he still hadn't been afraid.

But then, his cheek had been covered in blood, the blood of the allies he chose to lead, all spilled by this _monster_ , and his first instinct had been to flinch when the principal's hand neared his face.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, for maybe the first time ever, because he's long since forgotten how to love the principal as a father, but now he has to deal with the added burden of how not to feel like he's going to be eaten alive.

-0-

He's never been one to get swallowed down without a fight though, so of course he has to pull out his own trump card. The principal is a monster wearing his father's skin, and what had he been taught as a child but that monsters were to be slain?

Bowing down to E Class feels like less than nothing, but it still doesn't feel good, not when all that's fueled him these past few days has been an odd combination of nauseating fear for himself and a foggy yet intense sense of concern for the wellbeing of his classmates under the principal's tutelage. Even as he lets out these next particular set of words, he can't quite be sure if he doesn't mean them.

"I want you to kill my father."

He'd clarified right afterwards, of course, that he'd only meant it figuratively, that what he wanted dead was the principal's philosphy more than anything else. He tells them that he's realized where the error in the principal's ways were most prevalent, that true strength was absolute, and that the only way to save his fellow A Class students was to have them rise from the ashes of the very same defeat that had given Gakushuu this clearer new perspective.

When he'd been asked, "Despite the fact that we all know you and your father don't have the most ideal relationship, he's still your dad. Doesn't it bother you at all that you'd be asking us to rake his legacy through the mud?", he'd replied with a genuine confidence.

"On the contrary," he'd said. "I'd be _fulfilling_ his legacy."

The E Class didn't understand, and to be completely frank, Gakushuu didn't blame them for it. It was all sorts of messed up, he knew as much, but it had been his normal for almost as long as he could remember. 

( _Almost_. Because at the back of his mind, he still keeps the memories of the father who'd been kind and supportive, and who'd smiled at him in a manner that was slight, but there. He hadn't yet learned how to let go of that sort of vulnerability-inducing sentimentality, but, at the pace things are going, it shouldn't be too long before he does.)

He'd continued on, afterwards, about how his father had raised him, and the consequent effects of that on him growing up. Naturally, he hadn't said anything too personal, because he might've been asking for a favor, but they were only his allies on the surface, and far be it for Gakushuu to divulge into his shitstorm of a life to people who'd be his enemies again soon enough. He had, however, explained enough for them to understand his urgency, and he can only hope that the E Class would be enough to rip away the principal's methods from the unfortunate souls that had landed themselves in A Class.

If he deigns to think back on it, to actually think about what he'd said, he'll come to the conclusion that he won't really mind watching everything come crashing down.

 _No_ , he thinks, as an image of the E Class hill comes to his mind, where Gakuhou Asano, the school principal, had once taught children with eagerness and passion, and where Gakuhou Asano, his father, had remained upon his beloved student's death, _I don't think I'll mind at all._

-0-

He recalls, vaguely, having wanted a pat on the head, or a hand on the shoulder, or any such lingering gestures of affection, as a reward for all his previous achievements and victories.

A slap to the face, he thinks as he reels in the feeling of having been thrown across a room right in front of all his A Class peers, is just as good.

It might even be better, Gakushuu resolves, a little masochistically, as he smiles, looking up from his position down against the classroom wall to ask the principal. He chuckles, a little bit, because apparently nobody else saw the humour in the situation. " _Uh-oh..._ your face looks like it's glitching out. Don't tell me I'm finally seeing your _fatherly_ side?"

He revels in the way the principal looks at him. Gakuhou Asano stares down at the boy who was his son with a layer of frozen panic, as though if you peeled back through his expression enough, you'd find that he was going through a series of conflicts one after another deep in his mind. 

Ren helps him up, soon enough, and Gakushuu leans against him as a crutch as they make their way to the infirmary. When they get there, Ren is at his bedside, watching blankly as the nurse plasters Gakushuu's face.

She doesn't ask about what happened, and Gakushuu doubts that that's due to any politeness on her part. No, she'd likely already heard of how Gakushuu had gotten his injury, because news travels fast when the principal of the school you work under strikes his son in the face; and anyways, it's evident by how she can't hide the disturbance on her face.

 _Hah_ , Gakushuu thinks, because it was so funny. It was so _fucking_ funny. All this time that Gakushuu had looked up to the principal's composure, to how he remained the picture of perfection even should the worst come, and _now_? Now everyone could see in him the cracks that Gakushuu himself had prodded open. 

He laughs, then, mirthful and somehow melancholic all at once, because that's what people did when they win, right? They celebrate, and Gakushuu claps his hands together, ignoring the way Ren, concerned, asks him what's so funny.

"That was my dad, hahahaha!" He provides as an answer.

He keeps laughing, because for once he's looked at the face of something beyond the facade of a principal who's long forgotten how to care, and seen into the part of Gakuhou Asano that was fundamentally broken on the day of Ikeda's death and has never since been repaired.

He laughs until the tears in his eyes turn into choking sobs, and he thinks that, yeah, maybe Ren is his friend, because he stays there and watches Gakushuu devolve into a fit of hysteria one form after another, and stays until he pulls himself back together.

-0-

Endings are only satisfying if the journeys leading up to them were taut full of struggle and misery. Gakushuu doesn't particularly think he deserves a happy ending, but then he meets two people by the name of Mori and Nakai, and somehow that's all the closure he needs.

As he sees a boy wearing glasses and a girl clutching a bag with patterns of orange lilies exiting his father's old room, he thinks to himself that he doesn't need to put himself through this, and that he doesn't need to exert so much effort on somebody who hasn't been worth it for a long time, and likely will never be worth it again, because no matter how he spins it, he's always been the fool who wanted something that a broken man could never give him.

Initially, it had been his father's pride, then his approval, and then it all twisted into something darker, more convoluted and less simple to explain, and before he realized it he stood in Kunugigaoka wanting to see his father fall.

_But then, maybe... maybe that's just it, isn't it?_

Gakuhou Asano is fundamentally broken, and what Gakushuu needs is something that only someone whole can give. He's intelligent enough to know the solution to this problem doesn't need any sort of side stepping. 

(It's not like asking himself why he didn't have any friends back then, because he'd simply erased that question by making sure he'd been the most desirable person in Kunigigaoka. It's not like wondering why he felt so empty and lackluster all the time, because he'd simply erased that issue by replacing his motivation, switching his fuel from joy to spite.)

It's definitely going to make him bleed, trying to help Gakuhou Asano mend the shattered pieces of his twisted, ugly soul.

_So the solution here is simple, isn't it?_

He just... wasn't going to try anymore.

Gakushuu owed his father nothing, when his father owed him everything he'd ever lost, and the only kindness Gakushuu could muster now was to do nothing else to hurt the man who may have destroyed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, okay so I'm hoping you liked that :33 uhh, I guess I'm sorry if the ending felt a bit abrupt, but I don't know. For some reason I felt it apt to finish it there? There's a chance I might make a follow up to this, if ever anyone would be interested hehe. Anyways, if it wasn't obvious, i kind of just wrote this with the idea of an Artist!Gakushuu aesthetic in mind :")
> 
> Alright, so, as for the whol canon divergence thing: canonically, Ikeda likely died before Gakushuu was born(as evidenced by how Gakushuu mentions in s2e11 that his father has been the way he is for Gakushuu's whole life), but using that little shift in timeline for this fanfic, I've somewhat tweaked Gakushuu's personality.
> 
> In canon, he's likely less sad or lethargic than as compared to how I've portrayed him here, but my reasoning for that is, well, his father was a good dad to him once. So with that logic, it would be far more painful to have a basis for a good parental relationship before LOSING that good relationship, whereas canon gakushuu has just always had that sort of hostile competetive environment his whole life.
> 
> Hope that makes sense, haha, and if you made it this far then wow!! Thanks, and generally, thanks for reading!! Hope you all have a good day :))


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